


Snow Drifting

by sage_theory (papersage)



Series: The Snow Series [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-07 16:11:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersage/pseuds/sage_theory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <i>Snowbounding</i>. Daniel and Cam still have terms to come to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow Drifting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aizjanika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aizjanika/gifts).



_honey, you are a rock  
upon which I stand...  
I came here with a load  
and it feels so much lighter._  
\- Coldplay  
"Green Eyes"

  
**I.**

These geeks have to learn how to take a day off.

Okay, geeks is a kind of a strong word. Cam chides himself for the use of the word. Especially because the tone it takes in his mind (the derisive one that's just the old mind-body rivalry taking up arms again) is nothing close to the tone that the word "Daniel" takes in his mind (warm, exciting, sometimes a little scary, always amazing).

And Daniel is, by definition, a geek. He's in that class of people who, like Sam Carter, live for their work. Mostly to the exclusion of all else. Dedication is a great thing, but it can burn a man out like a bad light bulb.

General O'Neill warned him about this, in a little aside. Daniel and Carter would run themselves ragged if left to their own devices, he said. Part of being the leader of SG-1 was knowing when to tell his people to pack it in, go home, and eat pizza in front of the TV and sleep in 'til noon like normal people.

There was a look of worry as he said this, like a man about to hand a child over to a babysitter and shouting last minute details through the door as he went.

Cam gets that worry now. Not that General O'Neill was handing over children - Cam smiles and tries to imagine Teal'c needing babysitting. It's comical and wrong because he wonders what you do with a Jaffa that doesn't want to go to bed, and Cam is not entirely sure it will be possible to keep a straight face next time he sees the big guy.

But there are platitudes that hold their meaning for a reason.

Cam checks who's on base for Christmas, sitting at the desk he inherited from Jack O'Neill, with the hopes of finagling the schedule so that he and Daniel can have an extra day off. Looking over the time sheets, he gets a little bit of a surprise. Carter has put in for time off, and has asked for an extra day besides what they're getting for Christmas. Of course, she could take a year off and get it.

But Daniel has not put in for Christmas, instead opting to let the guy who just has a cat and a vespa and Nyan-the-alien-who-only-discovered-Christmas-five-years-ago go in line ahead of him for Christmas break.

Which is a problem, because Cam knows that Daniel knows that he's got a reason to take off for Christmas.

**II.**

Either Cam's psychic or Daniel's predictable because he can guess exactly how he'll find Daniel.

There will be books open around him. Like strange square flowers that have blossomed in Daniel's presence. His laptop will be open. An artifact will be in front of him. Various coffee cups and other implements of destruction will be laid haphazardly on the edges of desks where they could cause untold disasters for man and janitor alike.

Carter may or may not be there with him. If so, there will be another laptop open, some more books, and they will start leaning together over the artifact like they're going to physically meld their heads together and mind-merge.

He used to worry it was romance on their part. Leaning over the stuff day after day in close proximity can give a guy ideas, and it's not like Daniel's not interested in women and it's not like Carter isn't sex on the hoof to begin with. As a man who plays for both teams, as the saying goes, he knows.

Then he realized that they were both ten times more interested in whatever they were looking at than each other. It didn't hurt when Teal'c clued him into the long standing, much-repressed attraction between Carter and Jack O'Neill.

When Cam turns the corner into the room, sure enough, there is Daniel - alone, though - and Cam might as well have taken a picture of the mental image and printed it out and stuck it in front of his face. Because it's exactly as he predicted.

"Yo, Jackson," he says, hanging in the doorway. "What's up with Christmas?"

Best to take the direct approach with Daniel, because trying to be obtuse with him is like trying to outfox a fox or that old adage about arguing on the internet. Suffice to say, it doesn't end well. At least not for Cam. Most times. There are worse fates than finding himself on his knees in front of Daniel.

"Nyan wanted to visit someone and there weren't enough people on the roster," Daniel replies, not looking up, but smiling. Daniel's a worse liar than Cam originally thought. This is a good thing. But bad that he's trying.

"Nyan's an alien, man. He's got about as much emotional attachment to Christmas as we do to Columbus Day," Cam replies, planting himself on the stool next to Daniel and wrapping his feet around the legs and bars like roots.

Daniel looks up with a smile and a flat voice, "I'm very attached to Columbus Day."

Cam can't help but smile back, and sure he's a bit pissed that Daniel's blowing off Christmas with him and lying about it, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded why he loves the guy so much. Why he invited him to Christmas in the first place.

"I'm sure you are, but come on. My family is dyin' to meet you and no way I'm letting you off the hook for Christmas."

Daniel sighs. Cam can tell it's truth time. "I know you want me to meet your family, and I love that you invited me, but I can't."

"Why?"

"Work."

"Oh, that is such bull, Daniel!" Cameron shouts. Now it's really starting to hurt. "I saw the time sheets. You didn't even put in a request!"

"You want the truth?"

"Yes!"

"I just can't do it. I care about you, but I don't want to go meet your family and play pretend and I just can't. I won't."

When the hurt fades, Cam finds himself feeling sympathetic. He narrows his eyes. Maybe they hadn't talked about this enough. His bad, but easily fixed. "Hey. It's cool. They know about us."

Daniel arches an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Please. My mom knew I was gettin' some the minute I said hello on the phone."

"Um, eww."

"I know it might be awkward, but they want to meet you. I know they'd love you and I think you'd love them. Maybe, just for me. Fake it for a day. I'm not asking you to take a bullet."

"A bullet would be easier," he grumbles, and sighs. More truth is coming down the pipeline by the sounds of it. "I just can't. I know it means a lot to you, but this is just something I can't do."

And the hurt comes back. Cam thinks he wants to put a moratorium on that sigh of Daniel's, the one that makes him look like he's kind of shrinking. It's an ill wind if ever there was one.

"Fine. Whatever," he says, dismounting the stool. The SGC is not the place to fight with his boyfriend - don't ask, don't tell aside, it's just unprofessional - and he's got nothing remotely kind or loving to say. He's too pissed and he's been a pilot long enough to know that when you're _that_ mad, you just walk away because all your decisions are going to spectacularly stupid after that.

"Cam," Daniel calls, sounding like a plea and an apology all at once. Cam halt in his tracks. "I know you want me to, and maybe one day. The last time I got attached to a family, my wife and brother-in-law got taken as hosts and I was responsible for their entire people being destroyed in a massive explosion."

This time, it doesn't dissolve the hurt as much or as quick as Cam would like. But eventually it helps. By lunch time he's a little less angry but no less hurt. It means something, seeing the apology in Daniel's eyes when he slides his tray next to Cam's and is smart enough not to say anything.

He mumbles, not feeling in the mood to meet the blue eyes across the table. "My family doesn't live anywhere near a pyramid, you know."

Daniel nods, tries to smile and fails at it. "I know."

He takes Daniel's last couple of french fries as payment. Petty, but Daniel really wanted those fries and he'd like it if Daniel had to miss something, too. Even if it's nothing like Cam is going to miss Daniel come Christmas.

III.

Daniel has to consider the fact that short of the winter where he spent the time ascended and nearly omniscient, this has been the strangest winter in his life.

Technically, winter only began a few days ago. The first snow came a couple of months ago and it came bringing a blizzard and Cam to his door. Daniel tried his damndest to make it casual, a game or a distraction at best. He tried to be just a boy throwing snowballs, he tried to let it melt with the ice.

It didn't melt. It stuck around for the next snow and the weird warm spell they had and ten different planets and Daniel's best attempts to shrug it off as a fling, as not mattering.

Cam has a way of sliding in smooth and deceptive, taking it slow and making it feel like nothing's happening even when everything is going down in spirals. Daniel didn't even feel like he was falling in love - he didn't realize it had happened until it was done. Until he was giving Cam keys to his house and going all the way with him and automatically shaping his body to Cam's at night (even when he wasn't there or just one tent over).

Says something for Cam as a pilot and a lover. It's only been in the last couple of weeks that Daniel has even realized that all this time, he's been moving on. He's called Jack a lot less, he's putting up new pictures, putting a new toothbrush in the holder where Jack's used to go. He's making plans without realizing they're plans.

In years past, Jack never asked him to Christmas - and Daniel was grateful for it. They avoided holidays as a rule, because neither of them needed the reminders. Come the 25th of December, Daniel had the run of the world to himself it felt like. Streets were empty, stores were closed, lights were snuffed out and all was silent and still and deserted. Sometimes Daniel went for drives and enjoyed the isolation and the dead silence.

Now the silence is an accusation, an undeserved reward. Something he stole from Cam. Something he stole from Cam's family.

There are presents under a tree that belong to him, and Cam will have to accept them with a smile and a lie - a lie about how work and schedules. He knows Cam *will* tell that lie, and he knows it *will* hurt. But the thought of that big Midwestern family, all smiles and open arms, accepting even against the mores of their society. It's too much like that other family he had, or the one before that. The ones he lost.

This is supposed to be a casual thing. Or it *was*. Now, here he is, trying to decide if Cam is worth that risk, that terrible risk, of setting down roots and hoping, praying that this time they won't get ripped up, taking chunks of his soul along with it.

Daniel can feel the shame and the sharp pain from here at the mere idea of asking if Cam is worth it. The answer is obvious. He looks out across the blowing snow that's started up and wishes that he could expect Cam to make his way through it any second.

Daniel looks down at his coffee mug, and there's no flavor to his coffee, only the bitterness. Then he looks to the keys on the keyrack by the door.

And a strange thought occurs to him: _the sooner you start out, the less snow you'll have to drive through._

IV.

Nothing like family to work a man out of his foul moods - or put him in a worse one. His mom knows that he's lying through his teeth, even though Cam tried his best to sell the story that Daniel was kept away by work but really wanted to come.

Cam tries to explain it, tries to take up Daniel's defense - but arguing with his mom is worse than that adage about arguing on the internet. And also never ends well for him. Ever.

She shakes a spoon at him and says, in one of the few private moments they're likely to get, "If he loves you, Cam, he'll come see your family, he'll do things that are important to you, too."

Cam sighs. "He does. Daniel...he's never - he's never had a family growing up. It's just kinda weird for him."

"Well, if you love someone, you suck it up and you put up with it. I put up with your grandmother for years, because I loved your father and that was his mother. I bit my tongue around that woman, you know I did."

Cam grins. The rivalry between his mother and grandmother is something of a family legend, and for a split second he thinks that Daniel would get a kick out of hearing the old stories recounted, especially the one about his mother and grandmother practically drag racing down main street on Thanksgiving, bound and determined to beat the other to the last store open in town, each vying for the prize of the last can of french onion soup left in town.

Except he won't get to. Cam looks down into his glass of eggnog. "I know. I know."

Then his mom does what she is so miraculously good out, what only a few people in the world can do. She turns him around and sets him right all in one motion. She kisses him on the cheek and says, "But your family loves you, no matter what. Honey, I just want to see you with someone who knows how wonderful you are."

"He does, mom, I swear."

"Well, if he doesn't, he doesn't deserve you and you should know better," his mom says, again shaking that big wooden spoon at him. It makes Cam laugh. "Now why don't you go in there and keep your Uncle Tim company."

On the way out, Cam tries to take a piece of the christmas ham with him. His mom has a reach, aim, and precision that would make Teal'c jealous, because that wooden spoon taps his knuckles dead center without his mom even looking away from the potatoes on the stovetop.

Since then, Cam's had his hand smacked three times. One for the ham, twice for the pies. His mom and aunt Jenny have declared the kitchen to be out of bounds and shooed everyone out. It was crowded in there and at that rate, the pie was going to look like the surface of the moon with finger shaped impact craters all over its surface if they didn't.

In the living room, they're drinking eggnog and his cousin is updating them on being picked for the basketball team. Somehow, that turns into wrestling. Not sure how that happened, but it's a Mitchell family tradition. Cam has one of his younger cousins in a headlock when the door rings.

From the kitchen, Aunt Jenny says, "Cam, would you be a sweetie and get that?"

He walks with the scrawny teenager's head under his arm to answer the door. His cousin is laughing and pleading to be let go the whole way there.

His cousin gets the door knob and opens it, and without seeing who's there, croaks out, "You rang?"

Cam's laughter stops cold. He lets his cousin go and gives him a pat on the shoulder to tell him to scram.

Out in the snow, which is blowing sideways in a pretty good wind, is Daniel - with a bundle of presents and a shy smile.

"Is that invitation still good?" Daniel asks.

If Cam could compress every great gift, every wonderful holiday, every pie and ham and wrestling match and string of lights into one moment, one perfect moment, this would be it.

This is all of Cameron Mitchell's Christmases - past, present, and future - in one shining moment.

"Oh yeah!" Cameron says, and there is an explosion of joy that shockwaves into Daniel being sucked in throught the door by the shirt and the presents being hastily handed over to the nearest waiting hands so that Cameron can embrace Daniel in the tighest, biggest, most-ribcracking hug he can, squishing the gifts between them. "You came!"

"It's Christmas. I wouldn't miss it for the world," Daniel says. Then quieter, asks, into Cameron's shoulder. "They know about us, right?"

"Yeah," Cam says, giving Daniel a strange look - not sure why he needs to confirm that fact.

"Good," is the only answer he gets before he is pulled in for a kiss that, if harnessed, could melt all the snow between here and Antarctica.

Titters of laughter and a whistle from the couch and a chorus of, "Oooh, Cameron and Daniel sittin' in a tree" greet them.

Cam shakes his head and says, glowing and insanely happy and so ferociously proud of Daniel, of his family that he might spontaneously combust, "Daniel, meet my family."


End file.
